


when you're watching someone die

by vxle



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Hurt Steve Rogers, M/M, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Stucky - Freeform, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, based on THAT train scene in CA:TFA, but not in first person, the author needs to go the fuck to sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:48:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28513686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vxle/pseuds/vxle
Summary: You will catch his eyes during the split second before he falls and for a moment you will think the same thing you’ve thought all these years, you will think night sky and ocean bottoms, you will think rough fingertips and a booming laughter. You will not think death and destruction. You will think, home, home, home.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 3
Kudos: 13





	when you're watching someone die

It’s odd, the things you remember when you’re watching someone die. It’ll begin as a vaguely-present ache, shifting through your bones, slithering a trail of mud and freshly-scented soap. Once it reaches your back, it’ll make it curl like an elegant parenthesis.

The things you remember when you’re watching someone die will keep you up at night like a neon sign hung above your head. He smelt like coffee beans and tobacco. Sleepless nights and bloody knuckles. He smelt like both home and somewhere else, somewhere you’ve never been, breathtakingly dangerous yet warm, comforting. A stone in the pit of your stomach.

You will catch his eyes during the split second before he falls and for a moment you will think the same thing you’ve thought all these years, you will think night sky and ocean bottoms, you will think rough fingertips and a booming laughter. You will not think death and destruction. You will think, home, home, home.

And then you’ll hear his voice in your head calling you sweetheart, calling you punk. You will hear him scream your name in ecstasy, through tears, between laughs and moans, between everything you were and everything you wished to be. You’ll taste him nuzzled on your lips. He belonged in the corners of your mouth, underneath your tongue, shoved between the neckline of shirt and your skin, curled up like a child above the dimples in your smile.

His name will play in your head in a loop, like the broken record player in your apartment often did. You’ll have to live with the two syllables pounding on the sides of your brain. It will often feel as though you are missing your left hand and, boy, if only you knew. No amount of physical pain will make you forget the sound of his voice: his name will forever be carved into the raw flesh of your heart with a butcher knife.

When you wake up, it’s seventy years later, yet your first thought is not about the rushing sunlight or the unknown room. Your first thought isn’t about how you’re supposed to be dead and gone somewhere in the Artic yet you aren’t, your first thought isn’t even about the red-lipped woman you knew you had to love but couldn’t. Your first thought is him, him and his screaming eyes contrasted with the bloody snow. And, Dear God, you know this isn’t heaven, because heaven would mean him smiling at you with a cigarette dangling from his lips, so your first thought is “I never wanted this.”

You never wanted this, and still don’t, until among a burning street and screaming civilians you meet the eyes of a long-haired man with a gun in a lifeless hand. They’re smudged with black paint and icy, almost like the snow found its way through his veins and froze his heart along with yours, but you’d recognise them anywhere.


End file.
